What Dreams
by Caporal
Summary: A dream can comfort, but only while it lasts. Discontent, Maedhros dreams. Post Silmarillion, Maedhros and Irmo, slash, deserves the R rating.


**Notes:** Yes, this is Maedhros/Irmo. No, you didn't read that wrong. This was written last spring and was inspired by an RPG I'm involved with. The plotline didn't last, or rather it changed drastically soon after, but this stayed wrote. I'm fairly proud of it, actually. It's very surreal and probably confusing, but then dreams usually are, and it does get a tad emo once or twice, but then Maedhros usually does. Set post-Silmarillion, probably modern-day Valinor, in a dream.

**Warnings:** Watch out for slash, fairly graphic sex, confusing dream sequences, random Shakespeare, and Maedhros/Irmo.

**Disclaimer:** This does not belong to me, it belong to the Tolkien estates. Apologies to J. R. R. Tolkien for going so against the spirit of the original books, as this most assuredly never crossed his mind.

* * *

**What Dreams  
**

They are alone, but they are not alone. Faceless, irrelevant figures flit about them in the spaces and the shadows and the only sound is a dull murmurring silence of a self-absorbed crowd. For all anything matters, though, they are the only reality there is; the only two _people_ in all of creation.

They are having a conversation, and it is meaningless. You wouldn't remember it from one second to the next, and you don't. The sound fades in and out, only dimly aware of itself.

..._Don't you dream? _

_I only manage dreams, I don't live them..._

_...That's terrible..._

The words filter into being from nowhere and no one in particular, and no one can quite place them. _To sleep, perchance to dream..._

_Exactly. How do you sleep? How can you stand to sleep and not dream?_

_...No dreams is no nightmares. _

How to explain that the nightmares are a part of it, that it's better to dream of fire and ruin and death every night inescapably than of nothing at all? Impossible. A wall of fire springs up in the corner of your vision, either inspiring or stemming from these thoughts. A sudden urge to take up a sword in defense of everything that is right with the world is repressed because it isn't real anymore, it's over.

Just bad memories now. And the other understands. He does not dream, but he knows all dreams, and he knows these best, all the secret unconcious fears and desires and hopes and that bit of spirit that wasn't crushed under the iron wieght of a lightless sky and left to rot there with a lonely captive hand; he knows it, all of it, intimately. He knows how close all this is, a terrible black despairing rage just waiting to be unleashed, and he knows how it's still firmly in the past, and he knows what it takes to keep it there, better than the waking mind will ever realise. He is the Lord of Dreams, the Lord of Your Dreams, and his subjects dwell in the furthest reaches of your mind; they _are_ the furthest reaches of your mind.

And yet he still, with all this understood and floating between them, he can still say something like that. _No dreams is no nightmares_. The Lord of Dreams is what he _is_, but the _person _that he is is something different, something less, something more _real_. Someone who won't understand about the nightmares.

A hand takes another, and squeezes, since explanations won't do. Firm hands, real hands. Fingers intertwine. This is a dream, everyone knows it's a dream, but dreams are more real than reality, sometimes. So is the Lord of Dreams more real than anything found in sleep or in the waking world.

Sound floats back in. You hadn't noticed the silence in the pure perfect moment when there was nothing but the two hands clasped.

_Thank you... _For what? For anything? Does it matter? No. Nothing matters but the way that you're kissing him now, which is so much more of everything than the clasped hands -still clasped, clutching and held between two warm, tangible, real bodies- were, and it's just so _much_ and there is no more, no, nothing else ever, only this moment, and if you were awake you would wish now to sleep forever, just so the dream would never end.

You're kissing him, or he's kissing you; it really doesn't matter how you got this way. Someone runs their tongue over someone else's lips, someone's fingers are buried in someone else's hair. It doesn't really matter what's happening, or how it's happening, in the face of the fact that it _is_ happening.

Grinding, pushing, pulling. Clothes fall open to reveal smooth white skin and battle scars, scars ancient beyond modern imagination but the memories are clear and sharp and completely, utterly irrelevant right now. He runs a spidery finger along one... that's all you need to be thinking about it: how it makes you shiver in delight and how you'd almost be happy to let him do this forever.

Forever is a lot of time, though, and you're still impatient. With a soft, predatory growl, you push him backwards onto the cushions in, crawling over him, biting at his lower lip and trying to press yourself against every inch of him at once. Were you always on a couch? Now you are, so you might as well have been.

Rising up for a breath, you fix him with desire-clouded eyes. Your hair falls into your face and you can see him taking in the picture. His eyes aren't clouding, they're thundering. The moment lingers... then suddenly you're breathing again, grinding your hips against his, and leaning over him to capture his parted lips in another desperate kiss.

Somewhere, a part of your mind gropes towards conciousness. Maybe you rolled over in your sleep. You shove the waking world away, but the desperation has taken on a new edge. You know now that you're going to wake up eventually, and this should be finished before that happens. You kiss and lick and nibble your way down to the base of his neck, feeling vaguely _off_, but that's a concious thought, to be ignored.

He's melting under you, responding to your every touch with an arch or a moan, clutching at your shoulders as your hips buck together in a harsh rhythm; not perfect, but it's doing the job. You reflect that your positions have no continuity: the fabric of the dream is tearing, and you're not going to be able to keep it together much longer. So you let go of it, let it descend into the nonsensical chaos that every dream becomes when struggling to keep going in the face of awakening.

Every conceivable ending is happening at once: he's inside you, and you're inside him, you thrust into his mouth and you've wrapped your hand around him and stroke slowly, teasingly and behind it, through it all, you're still bucking your hips against his, which are in all likelihood really just your mattress.

You come with the height of it all; everything rushes past you as the dream falls to tattered peices. You hold tight to him, but he's gone, and eventually there you are, lying in a dark room on a wet sheet, breathing shallowly as the dream filters out of your memory like water through a seive. You don't try very hard to hold onto it. The bed is uncomfortable and you roll over restlessly a few times before falling back into sleep, and only the Lord of Lórien knows if you dream again.

**Finis.**


End file.
